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Topic: Bitcoin needs to move to POS. Thoughts? - page 2. (Read 7512 times)

sr. member
Activity: 350
Merit: 250
I dont know if it's meaningful to bitcoin network, but eth will switch PoW to PoS soon.
It's the second bigger digital currency, so... let's see how it will be.

for bitcoin, right now, i think like someone said:
"don't mess with it, it's working!"
legendary
Activity: 1848
Merit: 1000
I don't think POS is the way to go for bitcoin, there are plenty and I mean plenty of altcoins out there that love their POS but for bitcoin I don't think it would do it much good.
legendary
Activity: 1066
Merit: 1050
Khazad ai-menu!

I mean that if you can exchange currency tokens for energy (i.e. "buy gas") you will do so with consideration for how easy it was to obtain said tokens. 

Right?  If you had to bust your ass for a few proof of work tokens, you might be less willing to spend them all on joyriding in a gas-guzzler. 

Now consider if you received the tokens not because of work, but simply because you had previously obtained a stake.  Now, you (not everybody, but you) got quite a few tokens without doing any work. 

How about that joy-ride in the gas guzzler now?  Still not?  Maybe with a bit of peer pressure from that special friend? 

The point:  Free money leads to wasteful spending decisions. 

Unlimited private free money leads thusly always to unmitigated disaster, but that's called "fiat" and is another story.
First the distinction between mining as work and staking as free is unfounded, staking requires the (arguably) same type of work mining does, but it requires less electricity to do it. Secondly, I disagree with your points on spending, they seem to be very close to 'trickle down economics' thats used to justify giving free money given to the most wealthy. Free money does not imply spending, this has been shown not to work again and again. And in any case, spending itself is not the same as wastefulness, while spending in general is good for the economy and the problems of fiat are more a confusion of cause and effect (they see that in prosperous economies there is a lot of spending, then they try to force spending to achieve prosperous economies and fail), wastefulness is the spending where value is destroyed and where there exists a viable alternative where this same value would be preserved.

OK sorry if I wasn't clear.  My background is in physics.  By "work" I mean specifically force times distance, a quantity with units of Energy.   You are right, staking does require a nonzero amount of this work (energy expended), however the work required (the energy required) is not proportional to the amount of public coin issued.  Tying issuance per token to energy expenditure makes a whole lot of sense, from a "theory of value" perspective and also from a energy-budget-for-society perspective.  PoS might work and might even have some advantages in avoiding mining centralization but as far as the energy footprint goes:  PoW is the best we have.  Once we have a proof-of-negative-entropy coin I will change that statement.   

I also didn't mean to imply that free money implies spending in the sense of helping the economy, you are right to criticize that viewpoint. 
sr. member
Activity: 432
Merit: 251
––Δ͘҉̀░░
It is PoS that encourages more waste of energy resources, as tokens are not physically tied to energy. 
What do you mean?

I mean that if you can exchange currency tokens for energy (i.e. "buy gas") you will do so with consideration for how easy it was to obtain said tokens. 

Right?  If you had to bust your ass for a few proof of work tokens, you might be less willing to spend them all on joyriding in a gas-guzzler. 

Now consider if you received the tokens not because of work, but simply because you had previously obtained a stake.  Now, you (not everybody, but you) got quite a few tokens without doing any work. 

How about that joy-ride in the gas guzzler now?  Still not?  Maybe with a bit of peer pressure from that special friend? 

The point:  Free money leads to wasteful spending decisions. 

Unlimited private free money leads thusly always to unmitigated disaster, but that's called "fiat" and is another story.
First the distinction between mining as work and staking as free is unfounded, staking requires the (arguably) same type of work mining does, but it requires less electricity to do it. Secondly, I disagree with your points on spending, they seem to be very close to 'trickle down economics' thats used to justify giving free money given to the most wealthy. Free money does not imply spending, this has been shown not to work again and again. And in any case, spending itself is not the same as wastefulness, while spending in general is good for the economy and the problems of fiat are more a confusion of cause and effect (they see that in prosperous economies there is a lot of spending, then they try to force spending to achieve prosperous economies and fail), wastefulness is the spending where value is destroyed and where there exists a viable alternative where this same value would be preserved.
legendary
Activity: 1066
Merit: 1050
Khazad ai-menu!
It is PoS that encourages more waste of energy resources, as tokens are not physically tied to energy. 
What do you mean?

I mean that if you can exchange currency tokens for energy (i.e. "buy gas") you will do so with consideration for how easy it was to obtain said tokens. 

Right?  If you had to bust your ass for a few proof of work tokens, you might be less willing to spend them all on joyriding in a gas-guzzler. 

Now consider if you received the tokens not because of work, but simply because you had previously obtained a stake.  Now, you (not everybody, but you) got quite a few tokens without doing any work. 

How about that joy-ride in the gas guzzler now?  Still not?  Maybe with a bit of peer pressure from that special friend? 

The point:  Free money leads to wasteful spending decisions. 

Unlimited private free money leads thusly always to unmitigated disaster, but that's called "fiat" and is another story.
sr. member
Activity: 432
Merit: 251
––Δ͘҉̀░░
It is PoS that encourages more waste of energy resources, as tokens are not physically tied to energy. 
What do you mean?
legendary
Activity: 1066
Merit: 1050
Khazad ai-menu!
I think that there are a number of reasons this would be beneficial but the main one would be a reduction in the huge amount of energy wasted in mining

explain the nature of this so-called "waste". I'm going to give you a head-start: you can't

Carlton Banks has it. 

PoW is built to run on any amount of excess energy.  Any epsilon will do.  Bitcoin would run on a microjoule per year if that was all we could spare. 

It is PoS that encourages more waste of energy resources, as tokens are not physically tied to energy.  Of course PoS is much better than fiat, which ties everything to fraud, but that's another story. 

full member
Activity: 186
Merit: 100
Maybe switching to POS would be a good idea in 100 years once the 21,000,000BTC have been mined. But, right now? Nah.
full member
Activity: 141
Merit: 100
Mining is fun (well, most for the little miners, and more in the past, but that's still that). I helped a lot I think. Also, what to do with all the people that bought mining hardware ? What to do with the fex companies living of mining hardware sales and exploitation ? That's facts that need to be taken into account.
hero member
Activity: 614
Merit: 506
Applications
Bitcoin POS mmmm that would be nice and allow much more people to "mine" which (I think) it was one of the beauties of Bitcoin at the beginning.



Still.. this would destroy bitcoin at the current stage.
How can POS destroy Bitcoin? If Bitcoin move to Staking, Im sure the price will go high and it will be fair to everyone.

not sure at all.....

Would one be able to code Windows 10 on Windows XP (Old to New Apple & Linux codebase applies as well)?
Think that time has long passed (1Mb anyone)?
Having the idea of producing an interest rate from a 7+ year old prototype (sure 3rd parties, as the prototype holds the most value in prestige working condition)?
So research could be very much WoW (thinks about users who think Sha256 or Scrypt is still the only codebase over the years)?
Code:
Code has been tested with many of PoW to PoS for a reason (seen so many different tests on 1000+)?
member
Activity: 78
Merit: 10
Bitcoin POS mmmm that would be nice and allow much more people to "mine" which (I think) it was one of the beauties of Bitcoin at the beginning.



Still.. this would destroy bitcoin at the current stage.
How can POS destroy Bitcoin? If Bitcoin move to Staking, Im sure the price will go high and it will be fair to everyone.

not sure at all.....
newbie
Activity: 10
Merit: 0
Bitcoin POS mmmm that would be nice and allow much more people to "mine" which (I think) it was one of the beauties of Bitcoin at the beginning.



Still.. this would destroy bitcoin at the current stage.
How can POS destroy Bitcoin? If Bitcoin move to Staking, Im sure the price will go high and it will be fair to everyone.
newbie
Activity: 47
Merit: 0
In a hypothetical scenario where the consensus mechanism has become too centralized, a move to POS instead of another POW mechanism would be beneficial for BTC, IMO.
legendary
Activity: 1624
Merit: 2481
Bitcoin POS mmmm that would be nice and allow much more people to "mine" which (I think) it was one of the beauties of Bitcoin at the beginning.



Still.. this would destroy bitcoin at the current stage.
hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 500
✪ NEXCHANGE | BTC, LTC, ETH & DOGE ✪
Bitcoin POS mmmm that would be nice and allow much more people to "mine" which (I think) it was one of the beauties of Bitcoin at the beginning.

legendary
Activity: 1890
Merit: 1086
Ian Knowles - CIYAM Lead Developer
Neat, its like pos integrated inside pow instead of the usual pow/pos combo. Does this mean that the new money supply would just be created by minting, and mining would just be a requirement and not actively rewarded with fees and new money supply?

I wouldn't use the term POS as *stake* has nothing to do with it (i.e. how many coins you do or don't have is irrelevant) so it would require a new initialism (perhaps "proof of account" although I think POA has been used to mean other things already).

But yes the proof is only used to create/verify a new/existing minting account and results in no direct reward itself (any rewards for fees and/or new money supply are simply awarded to valid minting accounts in what is effectively a random manner).
sr. member
Activity: 432
Merit: 251
––Δ͘҉̀░░
Satoshi discussed and anticipated the issue, so saying what Satoshi did was dead when wallet mining was dead is not a factual statement.
Oh, I wasn't aware, thanks for correcting me.


What I am working on is a method to reduce the amount of "work" required for a POW implementation by limiting the work to instead be more of a "proof of active account" (with all blocks needing to be minted by such proven active accounts).

One way to picture this would be if we had 1 in every 1,000 blocks requiring proof from every possible minting account and the blocks between these proofs being minted in accordance with a PRNG that will determine the "best account" for producing each block.

So it doesn't attempt to replace POW with something else but instead "spaces that work out" allowing for much greater energy efficiency (with the trade-off being that it does require the use of accounts for minting).

I certainly wouldn't expect Bitcoin itself to use this approach, however, it might be something that will appear in a side-chain down the track.
Neat, its like pos integrated inside pow instead of the usual pow/pos combo. Does this mean that the new money supply would just be created by minting, and mining would just be a requirement and not actively rewarded with fees and new money supply?
sr. member
Activity: 433
Merit: 267
There have been a lot of great criticisms; PoW work isn't a "waste", PoS doesn't do the same thing PoW does, Nothing-at-Stake has shown for a long time that distributed consensus isn't possible, markets have not been convinced the PoS is superior, and cartelization.

I'd just like to point out that if you want to dive into this pool despite all the warning signs, you might want to consider what you're getting for this high risk. In the best case scenario we're looking at a currency that, by design, is controlled by a benevolent handful of wealthy stakeholders. Doesn't that sound familiar? There's only maybe a hairs difference between the objectives of PoS and actual existing financial institutions today, except these financial institutions are faster, cheaper, and more secure.

If you're willing to give up decentralized consensus and rely on benevolent stakeholders in your design of a currency, then there are much better ways to do it than PoS.
legendary
Activity: 1890
Merit: 1086
Ian Knowles - CIYAM Lead Developer
CIYAM are you working on usable computation of pow, improved pos or something else?

What I am working on is a method to reduce the amount of "work" required for a POW implementation by limiting the work to instead be more of a "proof of active account" (with all blocks needing to be minted by such proven active accounts).

One way to picture this would be if we had 1 in every 1,000 blocks requiring proof from every possible minting account and the blocks between these proofs being minted in accordance with a PRNG that will determine the "best account" for producing each block.

So it doesn't attempt to replace POW with something else but instead "spaces that work out" allowing for much greater energy efficiency (with the trade-off being that it does require the use of accounts for minting).

I certainly wouldn't expect Bitcoin itself to use this approach, however, it might be something that will appear in a side-chain down the track.
legendary
Activity: 4228
Merit: 1313
...
Regardless, the only way to settle it is to fork and let people decide for themselves. A top down, enforced approach has no chance of success in convincing everyone.
I wonder what fork the miners would choose...
There will never be a chance for bitcoin to go to PoS, it was too late since before PoS was created.

Obviously miners will choose the POW fork since the PoS fork doesn't need them.

If PoS was really a better solution a fork of the bitcoin software and then a fork of the block chain at some future specific point would easily be possible and is not dependent on the miners.  Both forks would continue for some unknown period of time, perhaps forever running in parallel with different transactions, balances and the like.
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